


Exposure

by singalellaby



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: avengers_xchng, Holiday Fic Exchange, M/M, every story should end with the avengers as a family, movie quotes are over-abused, not answering any questions about whether he uses Nikon or Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singalellaby/pseuds/singalellaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But that's what he does, Clint Barton, he watches. And he waits. And he usually does so with either a bow or a camera in his hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exposure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lexigent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexigent/gifts).



> Written for morelindo's prompt of "Clint does photography in his spare time. Steve is a sketch artist in his spare time. They find out and bond." for the "avengers_xchng" holiday gift exchange at LJ!

It shouldn't be something that people find surprising.

Clint has said it once, twice, a thousand times - he sees better from a distance. He deals better when there's some space between him and his target, something to separate them from him. He likes to be allowed to maintain his unique viewpoint, one that's almost clinical and definitely more objective than people who live in the thick of things. Being further away hardly means compromising on detail - Clint has always made a habit of counting eyelashes and freckles and flecks of dandruff on collars - but he likes being able to breathe without feeling hemmed in. He likes being able to see.

That single, important fact stays the same regardless of whether it's his bow in his hand or his camera.

-

"Get that camera out of my face," Natasha says, but it's absent-minded as she stares into her wardrobe. Clint lives to be contrary though, as evidenced by him being on _top_ of said wardrobe in the first place, and just zooms in further on her nose. Given their proximity, the telephoto lens is practically bumping her face and she bats irritably at it...but gently. She knows what he values. "Barton, do not make me tell the interns what your favourite movie actually is."

It's a threat she's never acted upon...mostly because it works. He makes a face at her, retreating, pulling up the view screen and idly tapping through the images on the memory card. Coulson looking deadpan eating a sandwich in the mess, Maria kicking some new recruit's ass in the training hall, Fury's hand splayed possessively over a control panel on the bridge...

"You off then?" he asks. One of them ought to be and it sure as hell ain't going to be him. He's pretty much stuck on Tesseract duty these days and he's determined to live vicariously through Natasha.

"Dubovka," she says, pulling out a red dress, studying it in her cool, clear-eyed way and then replacing it. It could be true, it could be a lie, but 'it's classified' is a boring answer and it's sometimes nice to pretend that theirs is a job wherein honesty can be relied upon. "Time to let some people think I'm far worse at being sneaky than I am."

Clint grins. Because Natasha playing the clumsy, feminine operative is both hilarious and beautiful to watch. Because she'll likely come back a little bit beaten up and a _lot_ smug and still not let him land a decent hit when they spar. Because she'll be out there and he'll be here and they won't talk at all during since she's strict about the whole closed channels thing, but she'll come back. She always does. "Take the black one then," he says, nodding at the simple number in her hands. She gives him a Look that implies he doesn't have the qualifications to be offering her fashion advice, but he notices the dress is in the bag when she finally zips it up and slings it over her shoulder.

"Stop trying to provoke Sitwell while you're on watch," she says frankly because neither of them do goodbyes, not seeing the point in them. "He's in charge of your next performance review."

"He's terrified of Coulson," Clint replies with a grin, cradling the familiar weight of his camera in his hands. "I'm not scared."

"Which is precisely why I always get better scores than you do." She sniffs and turns on her heel, briskly economical in the way that she moves and clearly not worried about just leaving him in her (tellingly impersonal) quarters here at base. "See you in three days."

He snaps a picture of her as she goes, her hair the brightest thing in the sterile corridor, her clothing entirely forgettable and her spine straight in spite of the fact that he's the only one watching her go. But that's what he does, Clint Barton, he watches. And he waits. And he usually does so with either a bow or a camera in his hand.

"See you," he murmurs to the empty room.

-

Thirty-four hours later a Norse god touches him over his heart and Clint's all-seeing eyes belong to someone else for a while.

-

It starts because a lot of the grunt work as a junior agent pegged for a sniper's work involves surveillance. A lot of surveillance. And these days there's an awful lot of tech involved with that, fancy scopes and expensive cameras, visual evidence just a shutter's click away. Clint is taught to use a camera for the government long before he ever picks one up for himself and, at first, it's just one of those mindless elements of his job. He learns to get the necessary photographs the same way he develops the ability to trick his body into not complaining about enforced stillness for hours on end; it's about practicality, not passion.

In his first week of the job, he's given a camera to hold that costs more than half a year's salary and it's just a hunk of plastic to him. He points it and shoots it and it does what he asks of it, and that's all he needs out of it. The pictures are equal parts clinical, perfectly framed and damning.

He doesn't think about it too much. There's not that much difference between a telephoto lens and the scope on the rifle he covets whenever he's allowed to use it on the range. The camera and the photos and the zooming in from people from high, high above, it's all as routine as the rest of his job.

(Yeah, that changes.)

-

In the aftermath, Clint is actually almost loath to touch his bow. He did good work with it in Manhattan, he knows that much, and he actually ran out of arrows which hasn't happened to him in _years_. And, clinically, he knows the deaths that occurred on the helicarrier weren't his fault, that he wasn't himself at the time.

But there are still eight folded flags that represented someone who died at the end of one of his arrows, and several dozens more who got killed in the fallout from the exploding engine, and he just...he just wants a break from the weapon. Just for a little while. Just until it doesn't hurt to look at it anymore.

(Normally, at S.H.I.E.L.D. funerals, Clint always unobtrusively leaves a photo of the staff member on the gravestone a couple of days after the actual event. But not these ones. Not this time.)

He spends some time in the range instead, putting in the hours with the automated firearms that Coulson is - _was_ always nagging him to spend more time on because, dammit Barton, sometimes the situation requires something with less of a signature than a bow. He lets (asks, really) Natasha to wipe the floor with him on the mat until he can't think of anything other than the screaming in his muscles. Mostly, though, he picks a high point in the city and watches the restoration efforts through the telescope of the longest lens he has.

He sees best from a distance and, right now, distance is exactly what he needs.

-

He first meets Steve - as in really meets him, without the impending doom of Manhattan making polite introductions kind of unrealistic or utter exhaustion leaving him incapable of doing anything other than chewing Stark's strange Turkish food and resting his injured leg on Natasha's chair - in the debrief afterwards except, even then, there are distractions.

Thor is being belligerent in a much more polite way than the first time Clint had ever had him in his sights regarding who has jurisdiction over an Asgardian bent on Midgardian destruction and Stark is dumping fuel on any fire he can find as well as starting a few of his own, and Clint is just too busy concentrating on not running away from a team he'd never been meant to be on and yet was somehow stuck with anyway to focus on the large, quiet man frowning down at one of the tablets Stark had shoved at them all at the beginning of the meeting.

He made more of an impression on the battlefield, this childhood hero of Coulson's, but he doesn't draw the eye or the ear when they're gathered like this as a group. Now, Stark is louder and Thor is (vaguely) more familiar, Bruce is more intriguing for how he's bigger on the inside and Natasha's the only family he has left now.

Besides. Looking at Steve Rogers now feels a little like looking at his bow.

-

And yet, three weeks later, Steve is the first of the Avengers he actually sits down to have an honest to God conversation with and it's maybe, possibly because a tiny bit of stalking via zoom lens occurred.

...Huh.

-

Clint spends those three weeks doing what he calls 'observing' and Natasha calls 'lurking'. She is, of course, a bitch and not to be trusted. Sure, his style of observation involves a lot of high places and not necessarily being _seen_ by the people he's watching, but...well, Clint and new people. He always likes to watch them for a while first before he attempts anything more direct and that's doubly, _triply_ true in the aftermath of something like the Battle for Manhattan. Clint's a sniper and a marksman and it shows. He _can_ deal with people right off the bat...he just prefers not to. Doing intel, gathering information, it's as much in his blood by now as the perfect archery stance and knowing what the kiss ring feels like when it brushes his lower lip.

Watch first, interact later, that's how it goes. It helps that he doesn't think the other so-called 'Avengers' quite know what to make of the guy who was off being Loki's pawn while they were having their inspiring, team-building montage without him. He's aware that Natasha has proved her worth with them - or, in Stark's case, has stabbed him in the neck enough times for him not to question her presence - but Clint...Clint has been too quiet, too distant, too 'master assassin' to be welcomed with open arms.

Clint wasn't even _meant_ to be on the team and yet he knows, from listening to conversations from air vents, that Natasha has point blank refused to continue to be affiliated with the initiative unless he's involved. Period. She of course hasn't said a word about this to him and he hasn't brought it up either, but...he gets it. He does. Natasha's doing her eerily calm thing that she usually does after a hard mission, but even more so than usual, and if she wants to fight to make sure she and he are spending more time working together than not, then he's not going to argue. He's not going to admit to quite how pathetically _grateful_ he is either, but he won't argue.

It's just that him being here basically on Natasha's say so, for all that he had his part to play in the battle, makes him keenly aware of the unease in the spaces between the words he shares with his supposed new teammates. They're all learning how to simply _be_ in the presence of each other, the team benched until the rebuilding efforts are further along and S.H.I.E.L.D. has headquarters that aren't a crater in the ground again, but Tony and Bruce enjoy spazzing at each other over particle accelerators or whatever it is they do and Thor seems allergic to awkwardness and Natasha simply doesn't admit that it _exists_. Clint doesn't want to tag along in her shadow though as she talks to Bruce about Indian food and Pepper about art and stares Tony into submission, so he does his own thing.

Hence the range time. And the sparring. And, yes, the watching the city put itself back together again after the Chitauri tried to raze it the ground. As it turns out, Stark moving the Avengers into his damaged but still standing tower leaves Clint with a new set of vantage points to stake out and also the best view in the city from the roof. Living with Stark is predictably horrific, but it's better than the Rooms That Are No More in the old base and _infinitely_ preferable to living with the ghosts in the Helicarrier and so when Natasha tells him in no uncertain terms that they're accepting his offer, he only puts up a token resistance.

He fills his drawers with tank-tops, sticks his purple toothbrush in the bathroom and (carefully) shoves his bow in the back of the ludicrously large walk-in closet and that's him moved in. Then he promptly retreats to the roof and stays there for most of the next few weeks.

The dust clears. Both literally and metaphorically. The skyline - much reduced and disturbingly jagged - is peppered with cranes. And yet New York City and its people show a remarkable capacity to just _get the fuck on with it._ The streets get swept and windows get replaced and the city comes back to life. Through his camera lens, Clint watches as, slowly, the rhythm of daily life returns to normal. Maybe a little changed, yes, but crescendoing up out of the shocked silence the Chitauri left in their wake.

Clint's pictures - hundred of them - show construction, healing, _rebirth_ , and he's the only one who sees them. The people down there, they see the trees, the way the battle affected _their_ individual lives, but Clint...Clint has always seen the forest first and foremost.

Natasha joins him up here once. She brings her gun and cleans it, not saying anything as she whiles away two hours up there in the cold, clear air with him, but her thigh is strong and solid against his the entire time and when she leaves he's a little less...a little less whatever the word is that doesn't quite mean lonely, but sums up how disjointed and detached from it all he feels, even for a sniper. Mostly, though, this is his retreat, his place of solace and people leave him alone up there. He sees Stark blast off several times and, once, he's pretty sure he sees Thor chasing _pigeons_ through some low-lying clouds, but that's fine. He can deal with his new teammates from a distance. He even grins a little a bit at the haunted look the pigeons get in their eyes whenever thunder booms, however distant.

The day he sees Steve, though, he hadn't even been expecting it. He'd had his eye to the viewfinder, just panning around and liking the way the narrow frame of vision completely erases the space between him and the focal point even if it technically still exists, and his gaze falls upon this cafe down below him on ground level. Once, it would have been hidden from this line of sight, except the parking lot between here and there got taken out by a flailing space-serpent tail, and even now Clint might have panned over it if blond hair and broad shoulders hadn't snagged his attention. Even in passing, Clint doesn't miss details and Steve...Steve's kind of a big one.

He's in civvies, clothes Clint knows for a fact he got from Old Navy, and yet he still manages to look out-dated somehow in them. There's a coffee with a ridiculous amount of cream on at two o'clock (Steve's, not Clint's), a broadsheet covering half the table and something in his lap judging by the angle of his arms, but it's hidden by the sweep of the tablecloth. Clint takes all of this in in a single glance because that's what he's trained to do, but the way he pans up to focus on Steve's face isn't exactly what they teach in Correct Surveillance Techniques For Circus Brats Who Want To Be Snipers 101.

The zoom on his lens is exquisite, so the detail is almost painfully precise, and yet Clint is aware of all the air between them. It's safe up here, the regard almost perfectly one way since he's pretty damn sure Steve wouldn't be able to see him, even if he was looking up from the newspaper, and that somehow makes it...easier. He deals better without direct interaction and, like this, he can safely study the man Fury intends to make the leader of their merry little band of misfits.

Inside the Tower, Clint gets his impressions of Steve in fits and bursts. He's seen him look pleasantly surprised and awed when told that people can have as much milk in coffee as they like because it's cheap and not rationed. He's seen him take to modern technology much faster than any of them expected. He's seen him react to MTV with all the horror that Clint himself actually feels but has never bothered expressing. All of this stolen in covert glances and fleeting scans of any room that Clint enters and it's only because of his training that he's gathered _that_ much from so little time.

This, though...this is the first time he's ever had a chance to study Steve without worrying too much about the guy picking up on it. He's more observant than his soldier-boy exterior might lead someone to believe and so Clint doesn't like to stare. But Steve isn't aware of him now. Instead, he just looks...well, tired actually. Tired in a way that Clint doubts the coffee will help with.

He looks young as well and Clint is reminded that he actually _is_ , no matter what his date of birth might say.

In that moment of realisation, Clint jerks the lens away and gets a viewfinder full of sky instead, but that's still preferable to actually feeling something like sympathy for one of his teammates. Pity's not allowed. That's the rule. And, besides, he doesn't know Steve well enough to pity him. Surveillance is clinical. Distant. That's a point. There's you and your target and all of those millions of air molecules between keep you separate and distinct. Clint very deliberately snaps an awful photo of a fire escape and then puts his camera away for the day.

Years of surveillance experience rears its head though and it's automatic to try and find the pattern, the routine, the one that you can exploit in the field. At the same time the next day his camera lens pans down and...yes, Steve's there again. Same coffee and a tablet instead of the newspaper from yesterday, but there. And the next day, and the next, and Clint observes the pattern of routine and yet falls into its trap as well because the day he realises he's instinctively looking for Steve at three thirty is also the day he realises what the mystery book he's been catching glimpses of all week actually is.

His camera's good, but not _that_ good. He can't see what it is that Steve's doing, but he's been trained to put the pieces of human behaviour together into a recognisable whole. He can see Steve looking up and down, the way his hand makes the pencil skate over the paper and he wonders who or what he's drawing. The young couple at seven o'clock? The architecture of the building behind them? The young, blonde waitress?

For once - in complete contrast to his training - the details themselves don't matter as much as the _why_. Because that's what intrigues Clint, far away as he is. Why does Steve have his coffee outside of the Tower? Why does he look younger out here than he does in there? Why does he _draw?_

Clint removes his eye from the viewfinder and the immediate world around him swims back into focus. He feels the weight of his camera in two hands - solid and sturdy and an escape mechanism made out of plastic and metal and glass - and, for a minute, all of that distance between them doesn't feel like much at all.

Maybe that's his answer.

-

This is why Clint Barton takes photos:

Because they use the same skills that his work requires of him and yet no one dies as a result of them. Because they're the closest he comes to making that moment of endless, far-seeing clarity _permanent_ and that's something he likes to hold onto. Because wherever he takes them, whatever backwater city he's holed up in, whether he's alone or with Natasha or Coulson, these photos? In a job where's he's a ghost so much of the time, never leaving a mark, in a job whose catchphrase is 'we were never there' they're evidence that he exists. That he _was_ there.

He takes photos because they illustrate the line between Hawkeye and Clint Barton and even marksmen need a visual reminder every now and then.

-

"This seat taken, Cap?"

Steve visibly startles and Clint actually wants to smirk. So much for super soldier senses when you're off duty. In fact, he makes a point of doing so, if only to hide the vague sense of 'what the _fuck_ am I doing down here?' He might not be Natasha when it comes to lying with every atom of his being, but he can at least over-compensate when it comes to bluff casualness as he drops himself into the seat in question. By then, Steve has collected himself and is doing a valiant job of looking polite again, even if the background expression is 'confused golden retriever.' "Clint. Good afternoon."

There's an unspoken question in there. Two, actually. One simple - how did Clint find him? And one so very _not_ simple...since when did Clint actively initiate social contact with any of them other than Natasha?

Clint's complete lack of an answer for the second makes it that much more important to answer the first one with as much ease as possible. "When are you gonna learn, Cap? I see everything." He gestures up towards Stark Tower. "Good view from up there." Deliberately deadpan. "Better, actually, now that some of the uglier buildings got taken out. Think the Chitauri knew they were doing us a favour by spring-cleaning the skyline?"

Steve's still doing the baffled puppy look. Probably because this is more words than Clint's spoken to him all week _in_ the Tower. But Clint's holding up the memory of that beautiful, unthreatening distance from the top of the Tower up like a buffer, calling Steve 'Cap' to give him some of the immediate camaraderie he'd felt when they were too busy being in danger to be awkward, and he isn't about to be deterred, not when he's damn come _down_ from his perch to...what? Satisfy curiosity? Either way, he doesn't leave Steve time to answer a question that really doesn't have one and leans across to tap the sketchbook - closed now, but still familiar. "So go on then, let's see."

Observing people up close isn't the same as from afar, through a scope or a zoom lens. The focus is different, the details different in quality. But sitting here, across the table from him, Clint watches Steve look first confused, then wary, then just plain _shy_ as something about his shoulders suggests that he's thinking about pulling the sketchbook away. And maybe this is why Clint ventured down here, to prove to himself that he _isn't_ trusted by the people he's meant to call teammates, that Steve has time for Hawkeye, but not Clint Barton--

\--then he smiles, bashful but brilliant, and ducks his head as he opens the sketchbook with a reverence that Clint unwillingly recognises.

(A new page turns.)

-

"I don't know what I was expecting," he admits to Natasha later, "but it _certainly_ wasn't that. He's good, 'Tasha, I mean _really_ good." They'd been doodles, mostly, but exquisitely done and with a playfulness that he wouldn't have expected of the man who is calmly competent in battle and quiet and curious out of it. Lots of drawings of people - strangers he assumed - and snippets of architectural detail, but scattered with pieces that clearly came purely from Steve's imagination. Animals, real and fantastical. Landscapes that weren't the Big Apple. A couple of obvious caricatures of himself, wry and self-deprecating. _Nothing_ he would have expected of Steve and yet immediately recognisable as the man's work nonetheless.

Natasha's on the pommel horse, her expression one of concentration as the flat straps of muscle in her shoulders, back and neck stand out in stark relief, and she doesn't even bother looking at Clint. "Surprising, isn't it? Those hands don't look as if they could deal well with a pencil." He stares at her than and _not_ because she's using the power in her stomach and shoulders to bring her legs up from a suspended splits into her doing a hand stand. Her physical feats of strength have long since ceased to even bear being commented on, but the words she's so casually throwing at him... "Have you seen his watercolours?"

"You _knew_ about this little hobby of his?" Clint is torn between surprise and being a little offended - he's _just_ as good at picking up on these things as Natasha is (shut up, he totally is) and he's going to be annoyed if he's missed this and she hasn't. Mostly because it's the sort of thing Natasha gets insufferably smug about. "Did he host some sort of gallery show that I was the only one not invited to?"

Natasha gives him an impatient 'duh' sort of face and then makes one of her usual (irritatingly) perfect dismounts, wiping her sweaty forehead off on the bottom of her tank-top. "Is this some sort of testosterone thing where you're upset that you're not the only tough guy with a secret artistic side on the team?" She smirks when he makes a protesting noise and, yeah, there's the smug look he had been expecting -- "I may have guessed, _possibly_ that he was an artist when he asked if he could draw _me_." -- and the answer he had not.

Clint is genuinely surprised into silence by that and Natasha, annoying partner that she is, laughs in his face because of it.

-

-

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Steve, to his credit, has picked up enough modern idioms to look suitably terrified when Clint ambushes him with that, particularly because he does so in the kitchen. He looks like he's thinking of blushing (and Clint doesn't need a telescopic lens to notice _that_ ) but then his gaze drops to the camera that he's holding like an explanation and his expression immediately cycles through first relief, then understanding, then a curious sort of delight. It's like Christmas has come early for him and, for Clint, that's fucking _embarrassing_ and he almost wants to retreat from how honestly pleased Steve looks. But then Natasha would laugh at him (again) and Clint's gotta find a way to keep _some_ of his pride.

He rarely actually does anything with his pictures. It's more the act of taking them that he treasures rather than actually displaying them. But for this he deliberately printed out a few of his better shots of Natasha, just to try and bribe Steve into showing him how he's drawn her, and the contrast...it's disconcerting. And weird. And educational. But mostly disconcerting.

Natasha's one of the few people who gets to know he's taking pictures of her and yet she's also the perfect subject because she ignores the presence of the camera. Normally, Clint takes pictures of sweeping architectural vistas, or clinically precise details when zoomed in. If he photographs people, it's from afar. But with Natasha he gets to take his time and not worry too much about being spotted so his shots of her are different from the rest. They're all about stillness and as precise as every photo he takes, carefully lined up and framed with the patience of a sniper, but they're rare moments, things out of the ordinary that he can tuck away and treasure and bring out the next time the world is going to shit.

One shows the careful precision in the way that she handles her guns when she's cleaning them, eyes focussed, and her frozen action in the shot mirrors the way he himself takes the photos he thinks. Another is her lounging, catlike, with a book of Russian literature in her hands, her eyes serious and distant. There's Natasha putting on her make-up, her reflection clearer than her actual face, her lips as red as her hair, Natasha looking as dangerous chopping onions as she does in a knife fight, Natasha sleeping.

That one Clint's most wary about sharing because Natasha doesn't sleep in front of people she doesn't trust. Period. But when he (tentatively) asked her if he could show it to Steve, she just gave him this strangely assessing look that even he couldn't decipher and said that they were his pictures, he could do whatever he wanted with them. He'd never have shown it to anyone else though, regardless of her show of dismissal, but Steve...Steve with his quiet eyes and gentle hands isn't just anyone.

It's that picture that Steve looks at for the longest, holding the glossy paper carefully by the corners. He doesn't touch Natasha's face, stern even asleep, but Clint feels himself hovering protectively nonetheless and it's ridiculous, it's just a damn _photo._ And yet he can't tell whether he wants to protect the part of Natasha on display here, or the part of _himself_ that's just as exposed here.

It isn't just Natasha that Steve's holding in those large hands of his right now.

But Steve's smiling, quiet and wondering and _understanding_ and even as Clint's squirming with an awkwardness he wouldn't feel if he was stark naked, the other man is sliding some pieces of paper over to him and...

Clint's Natasha is one that encompasses all the bits and pieces of her that he treasures, the ones separate from work, the ones where glimpses of Natasha poke through the onion-skin layers of the Black Widow, the ones that never get completely shed. By merit of that, they tend to be peaceful images, shots taken in their downtime, and everything Clint does is precise. The shots are detailed and keen and sharp-edged, much like Natasha herself.

Steve's Natasha, in contrast, is always in motion. She's a thing of curved lines and sweeping angles, moving even in stillness. In the sketchier ones she's practically dancing, stylised in their depiction and yet the fierce grace of her shines unerringly through the pencil and ink. Some of the ones most true in spirit are the most imprecisely executed, and it's _such_ a different medium from the one Clint works in. But he sees the same spirit nonetheless, especially in the watercolour studies where the colours bleed outside of the lines in a way that you would not think would summarise a woman so impossibly neat and compact and economical in every way, and yet the washes of pigment wrap around her like that energy of hers, the compelling strength that you only notice when she allows you to.

Most of Steve's pieces show her in motion - usually in her suit, usually in familiar poses from the training room which gives hints as to where Natasha allowed him to study her since Clint doubts she was willing to actively pose for him - but his favourite is one that looks to be done in charcoal. It's a headshot, some of the looser strands of her hair disappearing off the page, but the details are hazy at the edges. It's the expression on her face that is compelling though, Natasha through and through, that level, clear-eyed confidence that doesn't even bother to be a challenge because she neither wants nor needs your approval. It's a look Clint's seen a hundred thousand times before and here it is, almost sculpted onto the paper in just so much black ash, and he hadn't even _known_ that someone else could see Natasha the way that he does and yet the evidence is right here staring back at him...

"You can have it, if you want," Steve is shying, looking equal parts shy and pleased as he nods at the portrait he's still holding. "I mean, I don't think she'd appreciate me framing it and hanging it somewhere, and _someone_ ought to enjoy it." Clint looks at him, surprised, and Steve must get the wrong idea about the motivations behind the look. "Because you two...you and she...aren't you...?"

This is also a familiar conversation in Clint's life, but it's never arisen quite like this before. Maybe that's why his amused snort isn't quite so derisive. "Together? No. But we get that a lot." He throws in that last part because Steve looks mortified and it's not a good look on a guy his size, plus he knows how he hates to feel as if he's overstepped, old-fashioned guy that he is. "Once, maybe. But the specifics of us being...important to each other, it's never mattered, you know? I don't care _what_ 'Tasha is to me, just that she's something." Just that she's there.

That, already, is more than Clint's ever said to any of his teammates about how much of the person that he is now is defined by the unshakeable, unwavering, impossible to read presence of Natasha by his side, or behind him, or in front of him. He already knows that Tony is convinced they're fucking and has experienced some of his more transparent attempts to try and tease gossip out of Clint, but talking about it with Steve is easy and _that_ realisation is what makes him clam up. He looks down at the drawing again, uneasy and trying to hide it, but let's Natasha's serene gaze steady him. "...this is really something special, Cap. I didn't know you had it in you." Strengthened by Natasha's picture, he looks up again and is at least somewhat confident he doesn't look like a complete sissy. "Seriously. It's _really_ good. Like, good enough to sell, maybe."

Steve, predictably, looks bashful but not as paralysingly embarrassed as Clint thought he might have been. Instead, he shrugs and toys with a pen. "I don't know about that," he says, modestly of course. "It was always just a hobby before the war, and paper was always expensive so I didn't get to do it as much as I like." There's a soft reverence to the way that he strokes the rippled edge of his nearly full sketchbook and his mouth quirks up at one corner. Clint kind of wants to reach for his camera so he can record that moment right there, but he holds still. "I definitely never got paper as nice as this."

"You're easily pleased." Clint sounds rueful, he knows. He taps a thumbnail against the light meter of his camera. "My hobby got expensive _much_ faster than I liked. I had to go digital just because I was spending a small fortune on film a couple of years ago." He'd been grumpy about the transition at the time, but he had to admit there was a certain freedom in being pretty much unlimited in how many shots he could take in a session. And Clint liked freedom.

"I'd love to see some more of your work." Clint raises an eyebrow at him, but Steve's tone is honest, honest and simple. What else was Clint expecting, really? He's always sincere, he's fucking Captain America. "I like knowing how you see the world. I think it'll let me understand you better in the field."

"Always the leader, huh?" Clint's known for being hard on handlers and superiors, known for giving lip a lot of the time, but that question is, for once, teasing and not belligerent. Steve seems to get that and grins wryly, encouraging Clint to be bolder. "So have you ever sketched _me_?"

Steve flushes, just a little, but tilts his chin up. "I'd ask first," he replies, then cocks an eyebrow at Clint. "Have you taken photos of _me_?"

Clint grins, sharp and feral and wicked. "I _wouldn't_ ask first," he admits, but smirks when Steve looks wary. "Not yet, anyway." Smirks _harder_ when Steve actually appears a little disappointed and then it's the work of a moment and a flexed arm and the click of a button, leaving Steve blinking in the after-effects of the flash with Clint grinning at him without restraint now. "Well, would you look at that..."

Steve actually throws back his head and laughs when Clint shows him his surprised face on the playback, and there is _nothing_ clinical or distant about the warm feeling that curls up in his stomach in response to the sound.

-

Clint picks up a camera for something other than work for the first time because, essentially, Coulson makes him.

It's not long after he first brings Natasha in. _She's_ a rogue spy from the other side and distrusted by ninety nine point nine percent of S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel. By merit of being the one to convince first Coulson, then Fury and _never_ Maria that she was trustworthy and because he's only a junior agent himself, the same hostility that she's receiving leaks over to him. Consequently, they've _maybe_ started spending too much time in the gym bleeding off the tension by, well, trying to make each other bleed.

Apparently, it's terrifying a lot of other agents.

Clint isn't inclined to give a shit. And Natasha...he can't even tell what's going on behind that carefully neutral at all times mask she wears. The glimpse he got of the girl underneath it, the one who had been desperate to survive and raw around the edges even when he'd had her in his sights, hasn't shown itself since, but he knows it's there. He trusts that this was the right decision, cynics be damned. He stands by his call in the field.

But, right now, he's pissed. Because Coulson's just told them that they're being restricted to an hour a day in the gym and at the shooting range and Clint wants to know just what the _hell_ he expects them to if they're deprived of even that.

"Knit," Coulson says, unhelpful as ever. "Read the entire works of Shakespeare. Learn mandarin. Do _something_ that isn't work-related."

Clint stares at him, completely appalled.

Natasha just shifts, crosses her legs and says "I already know mandarin" in her deadpan way because she's a fucking traitor like that and is trying to make him look bad. He glares at her, gets a placid look in response and has to resist the urge to kick something. Or shoot something. Except, apparently, he's not even fucking allowed to do _that_.

"I'm hardly suggesting that you find some extra part-time work, or volunteer with a church group, Clint." Coulson isn't even looking at them; his attention seems mostly for the paperwork that Clint's sure he keeps there just for show. "Put it this way - from me, it's a suggestion. From the psychiatrists, it'll be an _order_."

Clint hates shrinks about as much as he despises bing separated from his bow. Even now, there's a line cross-wise across his back that aches a little for its absence. He scowls at Coulson and gets absolutely no response. To his right, Natasha is sitting in her chair like a lady. Or a robot. And they're both infuriating enough that he flings himself back in his own chair with an exasperated noise. "You won't send us on missions, you won't let us train, what the hell do you expect us to _do_?"

"Live a little," Coulson replies in that irritatingly distracted tone. He scribbles something incomprehensible on the form in front of him and Clint is summarily and completely pissed off even further by his inability to decipher it. "You have use of a car. Both of you. And you both have pay cheques that I happen to know that _neither_ of you have touched since Natasha arrived." He finally looks up from the forms, first at Natasha, then at Clint. He deliberately makes eye contact, knowing that Clint will take it as a challenge to maintain it as long as Coulson does. "Isn't there _something_ you can see yourself spending your money ?" It was about as much of a plea as Coulson ever made.

Clint is stubbornly quiet. The silence stretches on and on and then--

"Music," Natasha says. Coulson and Clint both look at her and she goes extra blank in the way that Clint already knows means she's feeling put on the spot, but isn't interested in betraying that, or flinching away. She seems (mostly) at ease as she shrugs. "Classical, I think. La Sylphide if I can find it." In spite of the calmness of her voice, she tilts her chin in the tiniest of gestures, like it's a challenge and then very deliberately looks at Clint. Coulson follows her lead. And, possibly, introducing the two of them is the dumbest motherfucking thing Clint has ever done because them both ganging up on him is so very unfair.

"I am not learning to like classical music," he says mulishly, but he sees that small smile hovering around Natasha's lips as she turns her head away, and if he sees it he knows she wants him to know it's there. Coulson looks relieved in his weary sort of way and just nods.

"It doesn't have to be music. Or anything too drastically new." He makes a vague gesture with one hand; the other is already creeping hopefully towards the paperwork again. "Transferrable skills, Clint. Use them. Go rowing. Or take up darts. Or use the surveillance kit to take photos of everyone in the base and pretend you're collecting intel."

Clint is a little bit ashamed of how he's so resigned to this being fucking _inevitable_ that he doesn't completely hate that last idea. He doesn't intend to share that little gem with either of the traitors, but the fun fact that they're all intelligence operatives throws that hope entirely to hell.

"Make sure to get my good side," Natasha says blithely and Clint groans while Coulson smiles just a little and, yeah, _definitely_ a bad idea to introduce them...

-

This is why Clint Barton takes photos and doesn't show them to people:

Because they're evidence. Of what matters. Art says something about a person, their values or the way that they think, and agents are meant to be inscrutable. Natasha certainly would never leave anything behind that could act as a window into her soul. And a singular _person's_ art says a lot about them. Says _too_ much about them to be easily shared. So Clint's photos...they give too much of himself away. For Steve, his art is recreations. It's trying to _create_ memories.

For Clint, every photo is a single chink in his armour, framed by a viewfinder and developed on glossy four by six paper.

He does end up showing Steve more of his photos. Lots more, any that Steve asks to see actually. The camera doesn't come with him on sensitive missions, so there's no question of security clearance, but it's still damning as far as his progress goes. The photos show where he's been and who he went there with. More than that, they show what's _important_ to him. He shows Steve photos taken from the highest vantage points he's ever been able to find, several from iconic monuments that _definitely_ aren't open to the public. He shows him his collection of country bars and his even bigger collection of country bar bar-tenders. Clint has also photographed pretty much every stray dog he comes across when he has his camera around his neck.

But, while amusing, and ones he knows Steve is using to sketch in the outskirts of Clint Barton in his heads, it's the shots of people that matters the most. There's Sitwell frowning in bafflement at the space where he claims he left his keys from the days when he'd thoroughly enjoyed giving him a hard time (examples of which still occur every now and then in all honesty.) A cluster of analysts thoroughly wasted and drawing equations on the bar after he and Natasha took them out drinking. Fury and Hill having a staring match over paperwork that's made all the more terrifying by them only having three visible eyes between them.

And, more than anyone else, Coulson and Natasha, Natasha and Coulson, Natasha and Coulson and stranger upon stranger upon stranger because that's the life of a sniper, up in his nest - you observe and you never interact and, when ordered, you let your fingers fall off the bowstring just so and then you're glad for the distance because it separates you from that sharp, singular moment of death.

This is why Clint takes photos.

This is why he sees best from a distance.

 _This_ is what he's laying in front of Steve Rogers now, paragon of virtue and bravery, who carries a shield instead of any sort of God damn _gun_. And Steve - amazingly, astoundingly - doesn't look away from the pieces of Clint laid out in photographic form, a bird's eye view in so many ways, and there is no distance here, no fucking distance at all.

-

The Avengers - _finally_ \- start to get sent on missions. Actual honest to God missions. And, in between them, Clint tries to use Steve as his example when getting to know the other Avengers, trying to imagine how he'd see them through a view finder.

They clear Lake Powell of the infestation of house-sized jellyfish that it develops one rainy week in September and Bruce grumbles the entire time about how it's both man-made and fresh water and thus Medusozoa shouldn't even be a viable invasive in this context. Clint frames a photograph of him in his head, sopping wet and disgruntled looking, drying off his glasses on a corner of his tattered shirt that's as soaked as the rest of him. Later, he presents him with what he claims is a Hulk-sized glasses chain so he doesn't have to dive down to the bottom of said now jellyfish free lake to fetch them when they get lost again. Bruce looks surprised...but takes it nonetheless, smiling tentatively, and Clint likes him because he's the only one who doesn't complain whenever he turns National Geographic on.

He wants to photograph Thor with Mjolnir, of course, but not in action. And definitely not in the rain. No, he wants a shot with him looking baffled while Steve tries to convince him not to leave something no one else can lift around in the lounge, or on top of the waffle-maker, and definitely _not_ in the shower. Looking back on it, he thinks Thor should have been the easiest to become easy around, especially after the first time he challenges Clint to try and play tag with his explosive arrows with that reckless 'I'm damn near invulnerable but that doesn't mean life has to be _boring_ ' grin of his. Plus, Thor's hands are less cold than Stark's armour when they fly him up to vantage points.

Stark-- _Tony_ spends altogether too much time in front of cameras already. Admittedly usually with Pepper these days but still. Clint shouldn't want to photograph him at all...but there's still something about the day that the Avengers (at Steve's request) go to a Labor Union protest and Tony gives a God damn holographic StarkPoint presentation about how an economy built on fair employment laws is far more stable in a way that _really_ not that subtly says he thinks companies that don't do so are complete and utter fucking morons. Sure, he's wearing Armani as he does it, but there's a challenge in his eyes and he looks good framed against that damn _rat_ , like this at least, Clint doesn't entirely want to convince Thor to fly him to the Arctic without the suit for an hour, just for laughs. (If he doesn't stop introducing himself as Clint's landlord, he's taking it back though.)

He's always photographed Natasha...but taking pictures of her with people? Being visibly calm or disdainful or exasperated? That's a new one. Because, until now, it's always been just him and her and Coulson, and when Phil died he wasn't sure...he wasn't sure their world would ever get any bigger ever again. And yet it did and, yesterday, he caught her actually _petting_ Thor on the head with a fond smile when he promised to introduce her to Sif and Natasha...she doesn't let people in easy. She's worse then him in so many ways. So how can he dislike the people who've wormed under her skin - and his - and given him photo opportunities like this?

(He takes as many as he can.)

And Steve...Clint can't help taking photos of Steve. As Captain America, cowl up, cowl down, shirt ripped to merry hell because all villains seem to be determined to get him naked, but most as himself. There's a photograph of him tacked up on his bedroom wall of the first time he's shown the newest prototype Stark Industries has come up with for their work in medical prostheses and it's both the _brightest_ smile Clint has ever seen on any human being, babies included, and the first time Clint ever willingly and openly got his camera out in front of the Avengers as a whole. It's not like him to do that, but it's just...well. There are some moments you just can't let slip through your fingers.

Besides. No one seems to care. Or think it odd. Or act as if it's _surprising_ that a sniper might occasionally hold a camera with the same reverent familiarity he does his bow. The worst that comes out of it is Tony immediately starting to do cologne model poses whenever he sees Clint nearby.

And as for the best...

Later, when he's developed a bunch of photos - ones he's whimsically taken on his film camera for once, temperamental light-meter and all - he's adding them to the rest in his room when someone knocks at the door. He knows it's Steve already because only he would knock and it still amuses him that their field leader still actually _waits_ for a response before he comes in.

"Where do you think?" he asks Steve as he enters, holding up a shot of Thor staring with joyous wonder at the goats in a petting zoo in Ohio. It's a frivolous question since he's usually pretty random in his construction of this collage that's grown up out of nothing, much like their once rag-tag team, but Steve takes it seriously and studies the ragged composition, looking for a pattern in the chaos.

"There," he says finally, pointing to a photo taken by a then very gleeful Clint of Tony in the suit carrying an honest to God box of puppies he'd saved from a group that seemed to be the villainous opposite of 4Chan. The photo itself is all the more hilarious knowing that at least three of the puppies peed on the suit and Clint likes the 'Avengers and Animals' theme that corner is now sporting.

"Sold." Clint chuckles and pins the photo up then stands back, satisfied. "So what's up then, oh Captain, my Captain?" Then he spots the familiar art shop bag under Steve's arm. "Oh, new sketchbook?" He grins and it's comfortable. In fact, it's more than that, it's warm and wondrous and new because apparently Clint knows what the bag from Steve's favourite art shop looks like. And that he likes to show his purchases to people when he gets home from buying them, like the biggest, blondest kid. And that Clint - circus brat Clint, sniper Clint, master assassin Clint - _likes_ being shown the supplies he get. It's a good feeling and so, of course, he turns it into a joke. "'Fess up. Are you here to ask me to grace the first page of your virgin text book?"

Steve doesn't blush at the word virgin - he's not _that_ bad - but he does look a little abashed. "Oh, uh, actually I was going to ask Pepper if she'd let me--...um. But I could draw you. If you'd like."

Clint, however, is already chuckling and shaking his head. "Unbunch those panties, Steve. Pepper's _way_ prettier than I am. Even I'll concede that." He feels his lips twist wryly even as his mouth decides to do that too honest for its own good thing, the one that Steve and his annoyingly earnest face causes it to do far too often. "Besides...I'm not sure I'd like to see what your fancy artist's eye makes of me." Clint's camera records exactly what's there and nothing more, albeit framed from his perspective. But Steve's drawings...they tap into the heart of a thing. And given who else has had access to Clint's heart this year, that's not anything he wants to see filtered through Steve's gentle eyes.

Finding out that Captain America _pities_ him - and shows it in art form, for everyone to see - is more than that much-abused part of him can take.

Clint tries to sidle past Steve then, expecting (and hoping) to take this out into the corridor, maybe on the way to pizza, but sometimes he does this thing where however mild-mannered he is, he's still a fucking _giant_ of a man and even just by standing still he blocks an awful lot of the doorway. Clint gives him a wary look, expecting one of his hasty apologies, and instead...

He blinks. Because Steve is close, _way_ closer than usual, and he looks weirdly hesitant, but stubborn all at once. It's like his Captain America face, the one he wears whenever Tony tries to convince them that it's acceptable to go to a strip joint just because it happens to have the best steak in New York, except it's also nervous and tender and _hopeful_ all at once. "Clint," he says quietly, voice steady in spite of the emotions flickering too fast through his eyes for Clint to pick out. " _Clint_. You know that...if I drew you...it wouldn't be as an artist...right?" And then there's a hand carefully sweeping down the bare line of his arm, as if Clint needs to be treated to be delicately, which is irritating because when it's a super soldier going the touching he _does_ need to be gentle. Except, for once, Clint isn't being pissed off by being one of the token humans on the team because he's following the sweep of that hand with what feels like every red blood cell in his body and Steve's _still_ looking at him like that, though with a certain crookedness to his smile. "Well. Not _entirely_ as an artist anyway."

See, this is the point where Clint should be pointing out that Steve is so far _out_ of his league it's not even funny. Seeing Steve naked is even on Natasha's bucket list and that's saying something. Or, failing that, he should be remembering that Steve is his field leader and S.H.I.E.L.D. has Strong Feelings about exactly this sort of thing. _Or_ just acknowledging the fact that Clint Barton, as he routinely and somewhat too frequently says, he sees best from a distance and that this...this is altogether too up close and personal for his liking.

Except...except it isn't.

Because Steve is close and warm and yet his presence isn't stifling. Clint's arms are peppered with goosebumps, but it's in a _good_ way and his heart rate's picking up in pace the way it does after a run or whenever Tony shows him a particularly brilliant schematic for a new arrow. And Steve...Steve's face is filling his vision, familiar and present in an extremely immediate sort of way and Clint _could_ hold onto the old adage of holding things at arms' length and liking his precious 'distance'. He could.

Or, you know, he could do the relationship equivalent of tossing himself backwards off a building to get the perfect shot.

So Clint jumps (not literally, but embarrassingly close, height differences being what they are) and kissing definitely isn't something you can do from a lofty perch. He kisses Steve with perhaps more enthusiasm than grace, but it's fine because after just a moment of stiff surprise Steve laughs into his mouth and strokes two fingers over the nape of Clint's neck. They have time, the gesture says, and Clint subsides, letting the complete _lack_ of distance between them turn into something more languid, a warm, slick slide of mouths and tongue. Clint's fingers tuck themselves up under the hem of Steve's button down shirt, and Steve has his hands palming the jut of his shoulder-blades - like the weight of a camera strap, or of a bow - and he grins into the kiss, wild and giddy and completely and utterly grounded in the hot clarity of the moment.

Sure, wide, sweeping shots are all well and good, but there's something to be said for the close-up at the end as well.  



End file.
